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Florida Grand hits low notes


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Florida Grand hits low notes

By Lawrence A. Johnson

Classical Music Writer

April 18, 2004

Florida Grand Opera is currently presenting its final production of this season with Turandot, the romantic fable of the icy Chinese princess whose heart is captured by the love of the persistent suitor Calaf.

Even if the performances of Puccini's opera turn out as successfully as Calaf's courtship -- this article went to press before the show opened Wednesday -- there's no disguising the fact that the company's 2003-04 season represented an artistic low point in its recent fortunes. It's the logical culmination of several unsettling trends that have been apparent over the past few years, with the depths plumbed this season pointing to a company that seems to be artistically adrift.

Florida Grand opened the 2003-4 calendar with a solid Traviata, sparked by the passionate conducting of Richard Buckley and an impressive star turn by the fast-rising soprano Leah Hunt. Momentum quickly stalled with Ede Donath's Szulamit, an obscure, musically barren and dramatically stilted operetta, underwritten by the composer's daughter for $600,000. Next came a Romeo et Juliette with two charmless and ill-equipped leads. The Don Giovanni that followed had a more secure if decidedly light-voiced cast, but the staging was practically nonexistent -- essentially a concert version with costumes.

If phone calls, e-mails and impassioned aisle conversations are any indication, a fair number of Florida Grand Opera ticket buyers are infuriated with the muddling mediocrity and worse of this past season. It is a view echoed by several ex-staffers.

"There were productions [in the 1990s] that rivaled what you would have seen in New York," said one former company official. "They've slipped from near-greatness into provincialism."

To be sure, the company has had some artistic successes, including a dramatic and stylish staging of Janacek's Katya Kabanova and an ambitious mounting of Blitzstein's Regina starring Lauren Flanigan.

But the majority of productions during the past four years have been like this year's Romeo et Juliette or last season's La Boheme or the previous year's Boris Godunov -- listless affairs undone by casting that has ranged from weak to disastrous, provincial sets and uneven musical values.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/entertainment/...ainment-classic

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